A Communal Life in Film, Examined

If every war is a thousand rolling tragedies, then the flip side of such conflict is also the opportunities it provides for humanity to showcase the better angels of its nature. Poker is the unlikely binding agent at the heart of Rescue in the Philippines: Refuge from the Holocaust, a briskly paced documentary in which a disparate but closely knit cabal — including the president of the Philippines and a future president of the United States — work together to concoct an intricate plan of rescue and re-settlement, saving over 1,300 Jews from death in Nazi concentration camps. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Rescue in the Philippines opens exclusively in Los Angeles this week at the Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills. (Three Roads Productions, unrated, 60 minutes)